DE Weekly: Rumination, Feeling Stuck, & Letting Go
Below is an archived email originally sent on August 11, 2025.
Rumination, Feeling Stuck, & Letting Go
As humans, we have a tendency to think about the past. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But, when we dwell on the past for long enough, we can be prone to feeling regret. We can want time back that we can’t have; we can yearn for time that is no longer ours.
I recently listened to an episode of the Modern Wisdom podcast with Chris Williamson that featured a psychologist named Dr. Rick Hanson, who shared a story about a Buddhist monk.
The story went like this…
There was a reporter interested in Buddhism who went to meet with a Buddhist monk to learn more about it. The reporter began by telling the monk everything he knew about Buddhism, while the monk sat quietly saying nothing.
After a while, the monk set down two cups on the table to pour some tea.
The monk began pouring tea into a cup, and kept pouring even after the cup was full. The tea was pouring all over the table and the ground, prompting the reporter to ask the monk what in the world he was doing.
The monk replied, “You cannot fill a cup that’s already full.”
You might have heard something like this before. So what’s the point of this message?
In this case, the reporter was acting like he knew all there was to know, and the monk wanted to show him he had to let go of some things in order to be open to new things. But he couldn’t do that unless he accepted he can be open to more.
In the case of our lives, it serves to remind us that we cannot move on from the past unless we embrace the present and open ourselves to the possibility of the future.
The great Roman Emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius wrote, “Limit yourself to the present.”
What can we take from that statement?
Like I wrote at the top of this newsletter, we humans have a tendency to live in the past. Whether it be wishing we did something differently, wishing we said something to that one person that one time, or even just reminiscing on “better days.”
The thing is, no matter how much we think about the past, it remains something we cannot change. If we think too long about it, we begin to ruminate.
Rumination can serve as a roadblock not just for our present, but for our future. It binds us; like a dog on a chain, it prevents us from moving forward. We get stuck in place and we feel like there’s nowhere we can go.
Especially when we are considering past “defeats,” it can even subconsciously project a sense of defeat into the future. We might feel like things never go our way, so why would it be any better in the future?
You would do well to realize: you are you now, and you will be you in the future. But you cannot be you in the past. Sometimes, letting go of something can feel like giving up. But it’s not.
The existentialists had their own term for feeling stuck and letting the past define you: sedimentation.
Simone de Beauvoir used sedimentation to explain how the lingering effects of our past choices and experiences can make it difficult to change course, indeed, equally difficult to be fully present in the here and now.
In letting all these past choices and experiences build up inside of us and never letting go of them, we let its force act upon us from the outside and from the inside, and it becomes harder and harder to resist and let go of.
Eventually, we fill our cups to the brim. When we try to pour more into our cups, well… it begins to overflow and we can’t take anything new in.
In a way, we let our past sediment our consciousness.
The way to avoid this is by letting go.
I’m not a believer in the “blank slate” theory, and neither were the existentialists. But I am a proponent of never letting yourself feel like you’ve learned all you can learn, done all you can do, or falling into a state of feeling like things are all over for you.
Your story has not been written yet. It’s begun, but it’s not finished.
The past is cemented. But the present and the future are not. These are not predetermined; we can and should control how we move forward.
Time is continually unfolding, but its unfolding is of no matter to me, for I cannot control it.
What I can control is my present––the present belongs to me. Once you embrace the present, you can see light at the end of the tunnel. That light is a future.
“Do everything with a mind that lets go . . . If you let go a little you will have a little peace; if you let go a lot you will have a lot of peace; if you let go completely you will have complete peace.” ― Ajahn Chah
Thanks for reading.
Sincerely,
Brandon J. Seltenrich
P.S.––
I’ve said this before, but there is a lot to glean from other philosophies outside of the one you might be most interested in. Great thinkers share their wisdom and greater thinkers accept what is shared.
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